The web giant filed a lawsuit against 1,114 alleged fake reviewers, who it says are tarnishing its brand reputation with “false, misleading and inauthentic” reviews, GeekWire reports.
It claims the defendants – named as “John Does”, the American term for an unidentified person – offer their false review service for as little as five dollars (£3.25) on the website Fiverr.com.
Amazon has a list of all the defendants’ Fiverr account names and is seeking a court judgement to identify the people behind them.
If Amazon — or any retail site — wants to get serious about eliminating bad reviews, they could accomplish a lot more for a lot less effort than lawsuits.
How?
Limit reviews to Verified Purchases.
Yes, that would eliminate a lot of reviews. But the truth is that product reviews have gotten so spammy that smart shoppers already skim past the ones which don’t have the “Verified Purchase” tag. Sites like Amazon, Walmart, B&H Photo, etc, could band together and share Verified purchase information, if they desired to get more reviews published — i.e., Amazon would allow your review to go up, even if you verified purchase was made with another retailer. They wouldn’t have to share pricing information or anything like that, just that Product X was indeed purchased by Customer Y.
Otherwise the spammers rule.
(With a tip of the hat to Glenn.)
